Story Highlights

INDIANAPOLIS -- Ashley Woolf was an eighth grader at Martinsville West Middle School two years ago when pandemonium erupted.

Gunshots echoed in the hallway outside the school cafeteria doors. Two bullets had hit a 15-year-old. The shooter, another 15-year-old.

"A teacher said, 'Stay here, lock the doors,'" Woolf recalled. "People were freaking out and confused. I was terrified and frightened."

Within a week, Martinsville had armed police officers in every school. More than two years later Woolf, now a high-school sophomore, says she feels much safer.

"I think they could get to someone if it happened again," Woolf said.

Whether that's so is at the heart of the debate over a controversial proposal offered last week in the Indiana General Assembly. If passed, the proposal would require every public or charter school in the state to have at least one designated school "protection" officer on campus, with a weapon, at all times.

Most notably, the proposal says if schools can't afford a police officer, it can arm a teacher, principal or other employee. Not specified is what training would be required or what would be expected of the protection officer in a crisis.

How to prevent school shootings has been part of the national conversation for more than a decade, gaining intensity after the December killing spree at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn.

Some say the answer is tougher gun restrictions; others favor a stronger armed presence on campuses. It is an intellectual and emotional debate taking place not only in academia, among lawmakers and policy advocates but also in living rooms and at dinner tables across the state. Even among gun-rights advocates, some question the wisdom of Indiana's proposal -- including Ashley's father, Mark, who is a National Rifle Association supporter.

"Teachers are not prepared for that kind of responsibility or adversity," said Woolf, 56. "That would be a recipe for disaster."

Paul Helmke supports putting police in schools if local districts decide that's right for them. But a statewide mandate that puts guns in the hands of teachers, cafeteria workers and janitors is what he calls "a bad idea for a number of reasons."

Helmke, a former mayor of Fort Wayne, official with the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and now a professor at Indiana University, envisions all sorts of trouble -- from teachers accidentally shooting bystanders in a crisis to students finding stored weapons.

"It puts our students and our faculty at more risk," Helmke said.

The Indiana proposal mirrors an NRA plan unveiled last week. However, the NRA plan recommends 40 to 60 hours of training for teachers and school staffers who want to carry firearms. The organization said it would prefer police officers in schools but realized not every district could afford the cost.

But law enforcement officials say more than 60 hours of training would be needed to prepare someone for such a responsibility.

The Indiana Law Enforcement Academy devotes about 200 hours to training police officers in the use of deadly force.

"The use of force is the most critical thing we deal with," said Rusty Goodpaster, the academy's executive director. "Target practice is one part but there is a whole mental decision making process."

Police candidates go through hours and hours of simulator training just to become familiar with possible confrontations.

If a gunman bursts into a school, an officer must work through a mental checklist in the matter of seconds, then have the skill to act on it.

"Then there is the mental part of being prepared to deal with the consequences of taking someone else's life," he said.

Kevin Quinn, president of the National Association of School Resource Officers, said psychological readiness takes discipline, training and resolve.

"There has to be a singular focus," he said. "If it isn't you are in trouble."

"Mr. Smith, the history teacher, has a lot of other things to be worried about, teaching and tutoring kids," he said. "Protecting the school and children has to be your only job."

Someone who thinks those obstacles are not insurmountable -- and worth the risk given the carnage of mass school shootings -- is Noble County Sheriff Doug Harp.

Located 30 miles northwest of Fort Wayne, Noble County has 20 schools.

After Sandy Hook, Harp approached the schools with the idea of creating special deputies from the ranks of the school employees. He wanted to, train them in the use of firearms and tactics and give them psychological exams and stress tests -- the same training his officers must undergo. And he wanted them to work in schools carrying concealed weapons.

The idea was not only to make the guns inconspicuous but also to keep potential shooters from knowing who's packing. The schools agreed. Several employees came forward for training. But county commissioners and the company that provided worker's compensation insurance for the schools opposed of the idea.

As of now, Harp said, his program is "dead in the water."

That's why he was glad to see a similar idea draw a spark in the Indiana General Assembly. He said the reality is that, without an armed presence in schools, they always will be soft targets and body counts will be higher than in a school that's defended.

"We get there after the fact," Harp said of outside law enforcement. "It's plain and simple. We're reactionary and we're not proactive when it comes to active shooters."

Harp said teachers shouldn't just be handed a gun, but with training they can learn skills to keep their weapons secure and to know when to shoot and when not to shoot.

At a minimum, others say, armed school staffers would give a shooter a reason to pause.

"A gunman would now have to ask himself if there is someone in the school who is armed and is going to offer resistance," said Mike Hammond, executive director of the Virginia-based Gun Owners of America, an organization that lobbies to protect gun owner rights.

"It might change their mind about doing it in the first place. I think the deterrent effect would be substantially higher than the actual effect of a teacher ever using the gun."

As with much in the debate, there are counter arguments.

Helmke, the former mayor and gun control advocate, pointed out that there was armed security at Columbine High School, site of a mass shooting in 1999. At Virginia Tech, terrorized in 2007, there was a police force.

"You always wish you had the scenario where the good guy had the gun and was able to take the John Wayne/James Bond kill shot and save the day," he said. "Real life doesn't usually happen that way."

Rather than requiring guns in schools, Helmke said, communities should decide whether and how to put armed adults in schools. Beyond that, they need to focus on more proven strategies -- making it tougher for intruders to enter a school, sniffing out problems early and doing more to keep guns out of the hands of the bad guys.

For some, the doubts about arming teachers and other school staffers are simply too much to overcome.

Amanda Olmstead, 33, had two sons in Martinsville Middle School West at the time of the 2011 shooting. But she says there are too many "ifs."

"I'm iffy on the whole issue of fighting guns with more guns," Olmstead said. "I'm not comfortable with it."